‘Idiot’ officer no longer supports Kasich

Special to The Vindicator

COLUMBUS

Rob Barrett has been a police officer for 20 years.

Last year, he voted for John Kasich for governor.

“I believed it was a fresh start for the state,” Barrett said.

That was a few months before the new governor called Barrett an “idiot” in a widely circulated video, in response to a traffic citation the Columbus city officer wrote Kasich a few years ago.

It also was months before Kasich and a Republican-controlled state Legislature passed Senate Bill 5, the controversial collective-bargaining law that voters are set to decide next month.

“Had I have known that this was what was going to happen, I wouldn’t have voted for him,” Barrett said. “It’s actually a slap in my face. ... Quite frankly, I wasn’t paying attention. I voted my conscience — what I thought was best, and now, unfortunately, I’m regretting that decision.”

Barrett was on hand Thursday for a press conference in Columbus, where opponents of Senate Bill 5 lashed out at proponents of the issue over a television advertisement released by the latter in recent days.

We Are Ohio, the opponent group, released a campaign ad last week featuring a Cincinnati grandmother whose granddaughter was saved from a house fire and who urges Ohioans to vote no on Issue 2.

Building a Better Ohio, the proponent group, used footage of the grandmother’s comments in its own ad, urging Ohioans to vote yes on Issue 2.

In a released statement, the campaign’s spokesman, Jason Mauk, said of the ad, “Opponents of Issue 2 usually complain the loudest when our message is working, and they clearly don’t want Ohioans to hear what this ad has to say. We’re grateful for the attention and debate it’s generating. It’s providing us with an incredible opportunity to explain to Ohioans why a yes vote on Issue 2 is critical to keeping police officers and firefighters on the job.”